Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
– Bill Watterson (cartoonist, “Calvin and Hobbes”)
– Bill Watterson (cartoonist, “Calvin and Hobbes”)
Recent Posts
- Day 14: Louisiana Senator Approvingly Compares Trump to Stalin
- Day 13: Elon Musk Flexes His Muscles
- Day 12: While Elon Musk Takes Over, We Podcast With Driftglass and Blue Gal
- Day 11: Harm of Fascist Regime’s Foreign Aid Freeze Comes Into View
- Day 10: The Fascist Regime Blames a Plane Crash on Nonwhite People
Last night on the ABC News blotter blog (no longer accesible):
ABC News this morning:
What happened?
tell the RNCC to “get the hell out” Yahoo
Sounds a little tense, don’t you think?
The chief of strategic planning on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, Army Col. Gary Cheek, has endorsed John Kerry’s view that the Global War on Terror is “far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering law enforcement operation.”
Analysis: Terror war may need name change, by Pamela Hess, UPI Pentagon Correspondent.
Terrorist tactics need to be delegitimized, according to Cheek.
“When we look at it, we want the world to view terrorism the way we view slavery.”
“If we can reduce this to a criminal act, the local government has the capability to act. The real trick is finding the right time to do that.”
As Pamela Hess points out- “Cheek’s idea is not a new one, and for all the practical sense it makes to the military, it is being floated at a politically inopportune time.”
Republicans need to hang on to power, “And one of their chief attacks on Democrats is their alleged preference to manage terrorism as a law enforcement problem rather than being serious about defeating them in a war.”
What makes this piece more interesting is that UPI is part of Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s right wing media empire that includes the Washington Times.
“Today, it is owned by News World Communications, which is owned by the Unification Church.”– Wikipedia
That’s interesting. I’ve been trying to get in to an Insight magazine (sister publication of the Washington Times) article since lsat night that supposedly says this:
I’ll put the link up if I can ever get the page to open.
It seems very odd to see that so many media outlets are going off-message for the Republicans, doesn’t it?
I dunno. ABC is putting on 5 hours of Thug propoganda Sunday and Monday.
Hard to say if reality is winning or not.
I forgot…I rarely watch network news. My bad.
I was really talking about their new docudrama “The Path to 9/11″.
GOP funneled millions to Lieberman
I saw this too and it SHOULD be the death knell for any Dem votes for Joe.
Here’s the rest of the story:
The White House funneled millions of dollars through major Republican Party contributors to Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s primary campaign in a failed effort to ensure the support of the former Democrat for the Bush administration.
A senior GOP source said the money was part of Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove’s strategy to maintain a Republican majority in the Senate in November. The source said Mr. Rove, together with Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, directed leading pro-Bush contributors to donate millions of dollars to Mr. Lieberman’s campaign for re-election in Connecticut in an attempt that he would be a “Republican-leaning” senator.
“Joe [Lieberman] took the money but said he would not play ball,” the source said. “That doesn’t mean that this was a wasted investment.”
I actually got sick to my stomach when I read this. What a waste product Lieberman is.
Hey, Ek, I love that fancy quotebox… think I’ll steal the code for my html toolbox. Sharp.
I’m not happy with the border color. RGB 10,100,10. I wanted it to come out more like the link or used link color.
The background value is 250,255,250.
Too late, I already stole it. 🙂
Oh my – there’s something happening here – what’s that sound?
Cabin, have I ever thanked you for doing these news buckets? I usually have nothing to contribute, but I sure do appreciate y’alls work to keep us informed.
ps – always great quotes.
Thanks, Alice. I have fun doing it.
And today is real heavy.
on the other side of the pond it’s Not a good day for Tony Blair.
Guardian, Uk reporting
“Blair faces crisis over resignations and his government is in meltdown”
Name the day Tony. Don’t be stubborn. Whatever is left of your.. umm “legacy” name that date.
While fighting global warming is important, we’re already committed to enough future warming that we need to be working on adaptation as well, a top British scientist says. The British Association for the Advancement of Science says the world must focus on preparing for the “hotter, drier world” that global warming will bring. Association President Frances Cairncross said politicians and environmentalists put too much emphasis on trying to prevent climate change and not enough on adapting the world to the warmer temperatures it will bring, The Times of London reported Monday. “Adaptation policies have had far less attention than mitigation, and that is a mistake,” she said.
Al Gore is hopeful for a Bush “conversion” on global warming: Gore predicted on Tuesday that W. would shift to do more to fight global warming, under Republican pressure from California to New York. [Both states have big 2008 electoral vote pools – K.P.] “I think there is a better than 50-50 chance that President Bush will change his policy in the next two years,” Gore told an audience in Oslo after showing his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” about global warming during a tour of Europe.
The failure to detect anticipated “shadows” cast by clusters of galaxies between us and the cosmic microwave background – the farthest thing we can see, and assumed to be the “echo” of the big bang – has physicists puzzling as to whether the microwave background might be something different entirely.
Certain properties of space-time predicted by “theories of everything” may already have been observed, but misinterpreted. (subscription required) Just as the random jiggling of pollen particles in water (“Brownian Motion”) was found to be due to the activity of much smaller atoms striking the grains, the seething activity of space-time itself at the smallest scales – far below what we can observe – can have observable consequences. According to quantum mechanics, a beam of atoms can be interpreted as a matter wave, and like a light wave it can be split and interference patterns observed when the beams are brought back together. Fuzziness in such images had been interpreted as due to heat and other random noise in the experiments, but a reexamination of the data shows the results are consistent with a transition between the “quantum gravity” realm and gravity as described by Einstein’s relativity at a scale of 10-31 meters. Certain “string theories” describing the smallest scales that exist predict this transition at 10-19 meters, and now look like they will need to be adjusted or scrapped.
World health officials last night put out an unprecedented warning that deadly new strains of tuberculosis, virtually untreatable using the drugs currently available, appear to be spreading across the globe. The strains have recently been found in Africa, where they could swiftly put an end to all hope of containing the AIDS pandemic through treatment. South African researchers found that 53 of their AIDS patients had the drug-resistant TB – and 52 of them died within an average of 25 days. Anybody with the virus becomes very susceptible to all types of infection. Tuberculosis is a major killer of people with AIDS.
The WaPo reports on page A-1 that fish possessing both male and female characteristics have been discovered across the region — raising alarms that the water is tainted by pollution that drives hormone systems haywire.
And the NY Times reports that the largest health study yet of the workers who labored at ground zero shows that the impact of the rescue and recovery effort on their health has been more widespread and persistent than previously thought.
That XDR-TB story is scary. It says that they’ve only seen it in people with HIV/AIDS so far, but it’s still a bad sign.
While the world is waiting for bird flu to evolve into a pandemic, we’ll all be blindsided by something like this. It’s frightening.
Link
When President Bush and Senator Voinovich joined up little more than a month ago to put the Bolton nomination back on the Senate calendar, White House political strategists suggested that getting Bolton confirmed would be a walk in the park. Here’s some good news: those same WH strategists and Republican vote-counters are now fighting an uphill battle to get Cheney’s man approval in the Senate.
Repeat: the White House and Republican Senate leadership is now fighting an uphill battle to get John Bolton confirmed. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote is up in the air, and as of right now, Democrats have the votes to prolong debate and block Bolton’s confirmation.
Getting Bolton out of committee may happen, but right now they don’t have the votes to get the bastard confirmed. The committee vote will be tomorrow, Thursday. Stay tuned.
Chevron Reports Major Oil Field Find by Elizabeth Douglass, L. A. Times Staff Writer
“A vast pool miles below the Gulf of Mexico could total 11% of what the U.S. produces. Skeptics note the uncertainty factor, and the cost.”
While this is potentially the largest find since Prudhoe Bay in Alaska and could represent up to 11% of domestic production, it will take years to develop and represents only 5.1% of our consumption (my math, highly suspect: 5.7 billion (annual) / 365 == 15.61 million. 800,000 production (per day) / 15,610,000 == .051 * 100 == % ).
I wonder how long they’ve been sitting on this info. Funny that they would announce it now, just in time to lower gas prices again before the election.
Oh, you mean in that bitter “I’m sorry I’m the only one who truly comprehends how screwed we are” kinda way.
Heh.
Link to WaPo article behind free subscription.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan made military recruiting, which was already difficult, even tougher. The Army and Army Reserve increased new soldiers’ signing bonuses for some jobs, raised the maximum age for enlistees and stopped some soldiers from retiring. A recent government report noted that many military recruiters were unhappy with their jobs and that recruiting violations — such as instructing applicants not to disclose medical conditions — increased 50 percent in one year.
By turning to the private sector, advocates argue, the Army can save money and free soldiers to fight. Critics say it pushes the limit to what military jobs should be outsourced, furthering a trend that has already drawn record numbers of private contractors into roles as central as interrogating prisoners.
“The use of contractors for this sensitive purpose, dealing with the lives of young people, is troublesome,” said Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who has often criticized the government’s reliance on contractors. “There is a notorious lack of oversight in all contracts, so why would we expect that in this very sensitive area it would be any better?”
To Serco and MPRI Inc., it is good business. The two Virginia-based firms have more than 400 recruiters assigned across the country, and have signed up more than 15,000 soldiers. They are paid about $5,700 per recruit.
That’s $855,000 that could have been spent on upgrading worn equipment, or caring for our wounded soldiers. Instead, the military is finding yet another way to funnel US tax dollars to corporations. The recruiters are offered all kinds of bonuses, cash and booty. With the strict oversight the military exercises over their private contracts, we all know that our children won’t fall victim to unscrupulous recruiters, right? [snark] If we were shocked by military recruiters’ shenanigans, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
do take some time to read Dahr Jamail’s Interview with Ray McGovern Part 3
..our dysfunctional foreign policy entanglement with Israel, the sinking of the USS Liberty coverup, the march to Iran and why the coming ’06 midterm elections are high noon…
High Noon. Indeed. Can the GOP afford to loose?